Loading DES files?

[Tiber]

I've been slowly (I'm a procrastinator, so sue me) looking at the vault stuff for my Thief Market idea, but I've been having some problems. Mostly I've been copying code from Ice Cave and tweaking it, but I can't seem to get anything into crawl to test it. After trying to figure out what's wrong, it seems like I can make workable vaults in existing files, but it can't find anything in files I create myself. Is there somewhere I have to add my file to the list of files to be loaded, or am I overlooking the real problem?

[Galefury]

AFAIK you cant add a new portal type by only changing .des files in trunk, you have to change and compile the source. For testing you could easily replace some other kind of portal without changing the source. I don't know the details however, kilobyte is the person to ask about this and he doesn't use the tavern. The easiest way to contact him is ##crawl-dev on IRC.

Alternatively you could do most of your testing in 0.10. Adding a new type of portal should be more simple there.

[infiniplex]

If you are using version 0.10 (or presumably any version that is on your computer), you can load your .des file by adding it to the file list in dat/dlua/loadmaps.lua.

[evilmike]

Portal vaults are essentially branches in 0.11, so adding them takes a bit more work than just modifying .des files. Galefury gives decent advice here. If you don't want to modify the crawl source, you can test your portal vault by replacing an existing one. Basically, all you need to do is replace (say) icecave.des with your own version, with your own vaults in it.

Also, I believe that adding new .des files doesn't work in the installed version of Crawl (someone who knows more about this should chime in). So again, you're probably going to have an easier time modifying an existing .des file, or doing what infiniplex suggests. There's no harm in doing this when testing.

[nicolae]

There's no harm in doing this when testing.

As long as you remember to take them out again before starting a real game.

Especially if you tend to place all your D vaults on D:1 for testing.